The Epstein saga continues to unfold, despite the US government saying there's "nothing to see here." China will hire you to be a wild man. UNO rolls out in Vegas. Swedish royal bodyguards accidentally leak location data via fitness apps. Twitter wants you to get an AI girlfriend. Oh, and Yeti Blood Oaths. All this and more in this week's strange news segment.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nola.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want
you to know. If you are hearing our strange news
segment the Evening it publishes Welcome to July twenty first,
twenty twenty five. We have so much to get to. Obviously,
(00:53):
a lot of things are happening in the world, and
we couldn't think of a better way to kick off
the show than to commit to our YETI blood oath.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I don't know what that means, Ben.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Weirdly enough, it's not a code, Matt. It turns out
that a Denver seminary has met some deep internal division
due to a YETI blood oath. This was reported in
the Pillar just yesterday. We're recording on July sixteenth. This
came to us July fifteenth. The clergy in the Archdiocese
(01:26):
of Denver are intensely divided over a blood oath ceremony
involving a vice rector and seminarians during a ski trip.
It happened last year, but the news finally broke to
the public. Here's what happened. There was a group of seminarians,
you know, divinity students basically studying at Denver Saint John
Vienny Theological Seminary, and Friar John neppel In EPIL took
(01:54):
the gang on a trip. During this trip, they were
woken in the middle of the night and quote invited
to individually swear a blood oath in a ceremony involving
a dagger and a man in a Yeti costume.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
I mean, I'm not the idea of a Yeti priest.
That's cool.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
None of us are Catholics, so we're not experts on this,
but that that's not the usual thing, right.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I don't think so. WHOA wait, I just clicked on
the link.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Yeah, check out the costume.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, the Yeti costume is pretty intense cosplay level stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Whoa yeah, this is okay. So video of this was
sent to the Pillar by multiple sources in the archdiocese
and the seminarians were quote told to scream as if
in pain, before returning with a bloodied cloth wrapped around
their hand and their mouths taped shut to the room
where other people are waiting to go swear the blood oath.
(02:58):
This was a farce, was a prank. They assured the
public and the lay folk that no one is in
fact a YETI worshiper in this archdiocese.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
I think maybe I am now a YETI worshiper.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
I'm started. Yeah, yeah, time to convert.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
That's a fun theater thing, like the initiation, the secret initiation,
where everybody's waiting in one room. One person goes in
at a time, and then you hear them scream, and
then you've got a bloodied cloth as they exit.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
And yeah the mouth.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, I mean, that's just theater. That's just fun.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
That's just fun. The friar did apologize and quote acknowledged
his imprudence, apologized to the archbishop and the seminarians involved.
While we get it, come on, man, what's wrong with
a little fun. No one was getting hurt. Like, did
the friar apologize for being the fun friar? You know
(04:00):
what I mean? My bad, Sorry, guys, I guess you
don't want these googly eyes on the crucifix anymore.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
I put googly eyes on them so they're not so scary.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
I put googly eyes on my rumba. But then it
kind of went rogue and stopped doing what it was
supposed to do, so I had to put it down.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
No, it was an old Yeller situation. It really was.
Maybe it got Maybe the googly eyes brought it too
close to AI. That's something we're going to be returning
to in a couple of a couple of stories this week.
We're also going to be talking about security leaks. We're
going to be talking weirdly enough about Waifu stuff, and
(04:42):
of course electric bills and maybe a mention of Epstein.
But before we do any of.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
That, I want to sit here about Epstein. Stop talking
about Epstein.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
You are a person. Let it go.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
We're done with that guy.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
He's been dead long times. Sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
We're gonna pause. We'll get to it. We'll pause for
word from our sponsor, and then we're going to return
with some fascinating stories. One of which we were actually
talking about off air earlier.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
Happens and we have return with the trio of the
strangest of news is that I bring to you today.
We're going to start with a quickie and an easy one.
And this just came to mind, I think because of
a conversation we had with the fair Dylan the Tennessee
(05:38):
pal slash Tennessee Chainsaw massacre Fagan about as a version
to competitive card games, and specifically UN came up. Maybe
not specifically for Dylan, but that is the one that
comes to mind when I think we all think of
like family games that can get a little heated, perhaps
(05:58):
and if I'm mistake, and we recently talked about how
the Mattel Company, who owns Uno did come out with
an official stance on the playing a plus something on
top of another plus something.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yes, right, and everybody ignored them.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Right, they said, nah, not cool. Before we go on,
I have no problem with family rules either, house rules, right, Like, yeah,
do do what thou wiltst what you got, matt.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
This past weekend we played Uno, myself, my mother, my father,
my girlfriend, her daughter, and my son. We're all playing Uno.
We're hanging out and that plus draw to thing came up,
and that's applying and all of that. Who has to
draw and all this, Well I went into magic rules.
Well you've already played the draw too, so that goes
(06:49):
that is on the stack, and that occurs someone plays
another drug to We went into this long thing and
everybody in the end he got kind of mad at
each other.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
Oh yeah, brother, let me just say I have experienced
the wrath, the gaming wrath of your lady friend, and
they're super intense about these kinds of things. So I
can see that getting a little heated. For sure.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
I've missed that that part of the experience and look
forward to it. But I got to tell you, yeah,
even folks, as you know listening in, even the most
loving of parents and siblings and familial relations will turn
on you with uno, especially when it's time to draw
those four cards and predict that color. It gets gets wild.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Well, you know what's funny. I always think the concept
that in a gaming situation, you're supposed to like not
play well against people, you know, like your kids get
mad at you because you played the game right, I
just does that blows up. I don't understand. That just
seems to be counter to the whole point of playing
a competitive game. It happens with me and my kid
(07:55):
with Mario Kart, which we are huge fans of. My
kid has absolutely attained an equal footing to me in
that game that I've been playing for over a decade
and takes it real seriously and gets real mad when
I shell them. But we are talking about Uno, and
specifically a new era of Uno being unveiled on the
(08:15):
Las Vegas Strip in Sin City. George Alakiki, writing for
news dot com dot Au in Australia, said the family
friendly game has caused drama around the dining table for years,
but it's now drawing a wild card at the poker table.
Beloved game Uno is set to debut in one Las
(08:36):
Vegas casino with plans for more. But there's a catch
that catches no gambling allowed.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Mattel has given the green light to a Uno Social
club that is located above the gaming floors at the
Palms Casino in Las Vegas, off of the strip, with
plans to expand it to more gambling locations. There are
different variations of the game that will be on offer
at different tables during this little pop up period of
(09:06):
July eighteenth through twentieth, so a couple days from now.
As we sit here recording. The catch, however, is what
I said, Guests wanting to gamble on the games despite
the venue will not be allowed. That comes from the
article I quoted. The decision is part of Mattel's main
objective to provide a elevated social experience at casinos instead
(09:29):
of real money games. A spokesperson for the company, Ray Adler,
who's the vice president and global head of games, said
we created unosocial clubs to reimagine what game night can be,
bringing people together for real world fun, connection and a
bit of friendly competition. Then Social Club in Las Vegas
is just the beginning, and we're excited to see how
(09:49):
these new experiences inspire players to show up, play hard,
and make unforgettable memories. But I don't know, guys, I
could see this being pretty divisive, you know, being such
a family game, and this is a little bit of
an odd publicity stunt if you ask me, I.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Think it's going to work. Maybe not to the degree
that Mattel hopes, but it's it's partially because Uno is
a very easy game to learn and it is fun
to play. But I also think there's going to be
illegal gambling because it's Vegas. You can't. You can't stop
people from walking by and seeing, you know, Matt's family,
(10:27):
or maybe if I'm playing with you guys, ever seeing
one person at the table and going, mmm, I don't know, man,
I got I got five hundred on the kid.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Remember how boring the World Series of Poker could be.
Sometimes it's super super exciting if you're watching it.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
But the personality is too right, like, yeah, yeah, but
most people.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Why are some people allowed to wear sunglasses in that?
It seems like a cheat, seems like a hiding, like bad,
bad medicine.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
But I imagine if it's just a bunch of people
in a series game of uno, like they're taking it
so serious and nobody's betting at the table, but behind
them with the camera's watching. Just what you said, Ben,
there's a whole secondary market where everybody's betting.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
Well, yeah, I mean the first time I ever did
any kind of gambling, well before we all went to
Las Vegas together, certainly was my first time. I think
it might have been at least one of y'all's first time.
The only experience of gambling I'd ever had was at
like a cabin with friends situation on like a dice
game like farkel or one four twenty four, or a
little you know, friendly craps or whatever. I mean, a
(11:35):
little friendly poker game. Yea, it was that, but it
was we put in some money. There was some money
to be made. We have a lot of people, and
then the buy in is low. But with all those people,
you can walk away with a little bit of cash.
So I have no doubt that people have been gambling
on you, you know, for years in these types of settings.
There's no reason not to.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
I mean people who like to gamble. This is not
casting dispersion. We know it can be a serious problem
for on any but people who genuinely like to gamble
will gamble on anything, right, Like what's that? There was
a billboard I can't remember if we're talking about this
on air. There was a billboard I saw a while
back that said be careful. You know, something like twenty
(12:15):
percent of people who begin gambling end up with a
serious problem. And then I immediately thought, come on, man,
if you're someone who gambles, you're going to take those odds.
Speaker 4 (12:25):
Bet on I like to bet on myself, guys. I
mean speaking of betting on anything, A big predictor that's
used a lot in these days and things like politics
or awards or whatever are the betting markets. Like there
are these apps that you can literally bet on any
combination of factors in various world events like Calshee, I
think is the big one. So a lot of times
(12:46):
when there's a big election coming up or an award
or whatever like the Oscars, you start to see the
odds favor certain things leading up to it. That tends
to be a pretty good predictor, because you know a
lot of times people that bet in that way and
at that scale are okay at it, you know, to
some degree, until they're not. Of course, there was some
(13:07):
There were some influencers that were invited to these kind
of events. One named is Zuos, who has one hundred
and thirty four thousand Instagram followers. I guess he's an
UNO influencer. Said, good thing there was no betting, because
I would have lost a lot of money. The thought
of the wildly popular game enjoyed by children and adults alike,
arrival casinos is scary for some, though, says the article.
(13:31):
Despite a strict ban on betting on the games, there
are fears it's now just one step away, and to
be clear, it would be in violation of the Nevada
Gaming Commissions regulations. It is not they have to approve
the games that are bet on be based on various
factors and odds and things like that exactly. So, Yeah,
(13:51):
let's move on to another strange news story. This one
has a little bit in common spiritually with I think
a story that you're bringing to us a bit later, Ben,
bizarre Chinese national park ad for wild man job draws
thousands of applicants in shino Jia National Park. Forgive me,
I'm not a Chinese Ormandarin speaker. A bizarre job listing
(14:15):
has come up in the Central China region for wild
men looking to be hired to roam that national park
and interact with visitors and essentially be half naked, making
grunting sounds and essentially honoring the legacy of a lot
of the kind of Yeti and wild man type of
(14:37):
myths that you know are very popular and prominent in
that part.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Of the world.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Ben, there was one we talked about very recently in
our Cryptids kind of continuing series that seems to check
some boxes for this theme.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Yeah, the Yeert We did an episode recently on on this.
Think of it like the Bigfoot or the Yetti of
interior China, And it's a fascinating conversation because, unlike the
United States and a lot of other Western countries, in
China this was investigations into this creature were taken very
(15:13):
seriously and it became a big part of the culture.
The best way to put it, I was talking with
our daily Zeitgeispals about this is imagine if imagine if
we went to the White House and said, hey, can
we have hundreds of millions of dollars to hunt Bigfoot?
And the White House said, yeah, go go. That's what
(15:36):
happened in China.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
Yeah, it does seem to be the case. The article
is reverencing this program. Don't specifically mention the erin they
just talk a bit more about just this the legendary
wild man, China's equivalent of the Bigfoot scene or spotted
historically in remote mountain regions and some of these forested areas.
So let's go a little bit more into the specifics
(15:59):
of the job. From The Independent over in the UK,
the job listing offers five hundred wand sixteen nine dollars
and sixty cents a day to act as non player characters,
essentially live action performers to roam in the park, mimicking
the famous legend of wild men of the region. The
organizers are using the fan groups on short video platforms
(16:22):
like du Yen and Shao Hongshu to find people interested
in applying for the job. According to China Daily, and
they have thus far received over ten thousand applicants, but
only sixteen folks are going to make the cut. So yeah.
This is in Hubei Province, by the way, the shang
Xia Forestreet district known for mountainous terrain, lush greenery, and
(16:47):
a lot of mystic folklore surrounding these types of creatures.
The creature is often described as being about two meters tall,
covered in reddish brown hair, and making haunting wo wu calls.
They're so called wild men are a long standing part
of Chinese mythology, often likened to the Bigfoot or the
yet heat.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
And Yerin, by the way, translates to wild men.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
There you go, that's the one, Thanks Ben, perfect full sir.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
It sounds like an awesome gig, right, especially if you're
a little younger and you enjoy that kind of stuff,
and man, that sounds so much fun, like scaring tourists.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
It's a great thing to say on a date too,
you know. So what's your job? I'm glad you asked.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
It's It is open to all ages and gender is
the only requirement being having a healthy body, So no fatties.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
That's probably code. That's probably code for height requirement too.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
And they will okay maybe so that could well be yeah,
I imagine just if you're out, because you're probably out
there for hours, right, like, yes, running around with the hair.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
There are some if you want to check out the
Independent article of folks dressed up in these costplays, much
like the yettie priest, and they are Candidates should be
comfortable being fed by tourists, what little kinky, preferably able
to eat raw food, and ideally enjoy isolation or the
chance to act out their real nature. While the employer
(18:23):
provides accident insurance. The selected participants must bring their own tents,
arranged meals, and be ready to run if confronted by
unknown creatures.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Well well okay, hold on, yeah, Well the images I'm
seeing here correct me if I'm wrong here, guys, but
I'm seeing more Neanderthal what might be described as caveman
correct stuff rather than wild man, you know, fully hair.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Some of them are here suits, some of them are
half naked. Some of them look more like indigenous types perhaps,
But yeah, there's there's there's a mix of interpretations. I guess.
The one that I'm seeing here on a let's see,
I think it's a Twitter feed is a video showing
some folks actually acting it out. Some of them have
these like big sticks, some of them have their faces painted.
(19:14):
So there are various kind of ways of doing this.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
You got to diversify, you know what I mean, because
you want people to go more often, right, you want
people to return. So maybe you can make it there's
something very clever in here. Maybe you can make it
a Pokemon esque or collectible kind of game. I take
the kids, take the kids, and you see the fig
(19:39):
leaf one day, you see the yauguay another day in
an ogre, and then a yurin.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
What if you could teach a urine to play Uno
with you?
Speaker 4 (19:48):
Oh, that's a good mashup.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
They need to have bigger cards.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
Well, okay, we got one quick one that I wanted
to add at the very ends here this one coming
from viceed human skin teddy bear caused a panic at
a California gas station. If you happen to be cruising
through Victorville, California this past Sunday, shout out to on
cinema fans. By the way, Victorville is a big thing
in that YouTube series with Tim Heideger and on the
(20:13):
guy that does Neil Hamburger whose name is escaping me.
This past Sunday, you may have noticed a whole lot
of cops gathered around a teddy bear that looked like
it crawled out of a horror movie. But don't worry,
it wasn't actually as horrifying I find as it first seemed.
It was just some oddly placed and admittedly gruesome art.
Authorities responded to a call about a teddy bear that
appeared to be made of human skin was found near
(20:34):
a gas station on appropriately bare Valley Road. A deputy
corner was brought in, presumably with the same level of
urgency one might bring an archaeologist to a newly discovered
cursed sarcophagus, and confirmed that the object's skin was thankfully
not of human origin at all. A forensic pathologist double
checked and yep, it still was not a teddy bear
made of human skin. Oh boy, is it hideous looking? Yikes? Yeah,
(20:59):
you all check if you have that link in front
of you for the vice piece. It is like something
that was like Jeffrey Dahmer's Teddy Bear or who's the
one that made things out of human skin? Was that Dahmer?
Speaker 3 (21:11):
That was ed Gean.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
Yeah, it looks like something he would have slept with,
cuddled up with at night times. It was the work
of a South Carolina based artist named Robert Kelly, who
owns a company called Dark Seed Creations, a Netsy shop wearing.
Kelly designs and manufactures realistic looking horror themeed props. Looking
for a fetal skeleton in a baroque picture frame, They've
got you covered. The bear made of human skin is
(21:36):
one of Kelly's creations, and it is again pretty damn
convincing and quite quite grizzly. One hundred and sixty five
bucks will get you one of these. Not bad. It's
a nice piece. I don't think I want it displayed
in my house. It's really really gross.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
He does make green style human skin lampshades, including human faces,
of course he does.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Yeah, so give the artists some love that South Carolina
based artist Robert Kelly. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna wrap
it up for my segment today. Let's take a quick break,
we'll hear a word from our sponsor, and we'll be
back with more strange names for you.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
And we have returned. I've constructed a little bit of
a narrative through line here that I think will feed
into some of the some of the stuff we'll discuss
with you, Matt in just a bit. For now, we're
going to look at Ai. Mecca Hitler aka rock over
(22:39):
on X is now launching something new, and it's something
that speaks to our earlier conversations with many of our
fellow listeners regarding people having intense emotional relationships with lll ms.
Folks who feel that they have like that guy from
(23:01):
Google a few years back. Folks who feel that they
have reached a sentience and intelligence not only connected with it,
but fallen in love with it, or it's become their
best friend or their spiritual guide, or it has revealed
to them that they are in fact the Messiah. Because
the LM is essentially a yes and machine, it's a
(23:23):
terrible friend in that respect, as well as a terrible therapist.
But could it be a lover? That's the question that
we learned from decrypt dot co in a story that
came out just yesterday. I'll give us the title first,
just for initial reactions. Artificial Gooning Intelligence Elon musk x
(23:45):
ai launches wai Fu companions.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
For grock gooning. You say, oh, I think it's a
little bit of a broad term. I think it means
different things to different people. But doesn't it just mean
like really long sessions of self love self care.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
I'm a relatively square entity in a lot of ways,
and I remember on Behind the Bastards, Robert Evans introduced
the term and explained it to me in a way
I didn't understand. So I'm not sure I think your
definition is correct. I don't know if Robert was just
messing with me, because he gave me a definition that meant,
(24:23):
how do we put it, delicately, multiple people pleasuring themselves together.
See that.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
I think that that's my point. It's a little bit
like it can be different things, because that's more what.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Like a like the old circle jerk right right?
Speaker 1 (24:40):
No?
Speaker 4 (24:40):
Yeah, to me, I've more understood it as like a
form of like extended sessions of like self deprivation of
pleasure in a way. But I've never heard of group, yeah,
the group version of it. Let's just see what the
old Internet has to say. Really, yeah, check urban dictionary
often associated with online communities. Okay, I think.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
The primary thing is it is associated with sex.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
Prolong your self simulation with the goal of delaying or
avoiding orgasm is the rough term urban dictionary.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
And yeah, that's what I saw as well. What we'd
love to do is here your made up terms for
gooning right to a conspiracy atiheartradio dot com. Here's the
story we're trying to get to, all right. Grock has
added on the heels of its anti semitic meltdown, Grock
has added a series of interactive AI companions for grock subscribers.
(25:34):
You pay thirty bucks a month and you play something
that's kind of like the Japanese relationship video games, where
you have to take certain actions to reach a level
of favorability with this companion. You can also see this
in video games like boulders Gate three or something. Right.
You have to you have to make your do things
(25:56):
that your companion likes and your relationship and relationship buffs, right,
and when you get to okay, so x Ai has
rolled out three different subscription based characters. There's Annie, who
is a blonde anime wife wu with a goth I'm
(26:17):
quoting here, goth and old fashioned style wearing a tight
black horset dress with thigh high fish nets. Uh. And
then there's also Rudy, who is a red panda in
a pink hoodie designed for wholesome conversations. The thing is
with Annie, A and I, when you get to level
three whatever that is, you unlock the not safe for
(26:37):
work content with your Twitter girlfriend and just to get
in front of this no judgment, folks, but there is
no level three not safe for work content with the
red panda yet, thank god, so.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
Far, there is nothing sacred. I don't believe the red
Panda sacred.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Guys, Guys. I found that what goon actually stands for.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Is it an acronyms?
Speaker 4 (27:03):
An acronym?
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Oh, yeah, it's it's the Grand Order of Occidental Nighthawks.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
Okay, it's.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Squad. Yeah, it's real.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
We are the Good Squad and we're coming to town bebeb.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
So this is I wanted to bring this to everyone's
attention if you haven't heard about it yet, friends and neighbors,
because this seems to be the harbinger of much larger
controversies on the horizon. Uh the the company has been
taking a lot of heat for missteps with Grock and
(27:39):
with you know, other chatbots on Twitter for quite some
time now. This also is happening in step with something
we talked about off air, a two hundred million dollar
contract awarded to Grock from the Department of Defense earlier
this Monday. So like Lie fourteenth, it happened so quickly,
(28:02):
and I think we can all say, without sounding like Luddites,
that this can be concerning because imagine you're an adolescent, right,
and you're growing romantic interest and inclinations in whatever your
bag is, and you meet some LLM or some chat
(28:23):
bot esque thing that purports to provide you that sort
of interaction you're looking for. Will the standards be realistic?
Will this damage your prospects of interacting with human romantic partners?
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Right?
Speaker 3 (28:40):
If that's your baseline, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (28:42):
Absolutely. I mean it's not much different from like peorn addiction,
I would say, in that it can cultivate a very
unrealistic view of intimacy because it's so self serving. Everything's
designed to feed your exact ego and your exact needs,
quote unquote, and there's very little compromise, which isn't really
(29:04):
how human relationships.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Work, right. It's concerning too, especially in the ways that
social media has arguably made folks more self centric, right
and more. I don't think there's anything wrong with being individualistic,
but maybe self involved past the threshold of helpfulness to
(29:27):
oneself add society. We'll move on because there's other stuff
we want to get to in this amount of time
we have. I do believe we can make an episode
about that defense contract and about the high level state
actor embrace of AI tools. I think that's a full episode.
So this is a weird way to tease that.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Are they friends again? I don't understand. I thought that
the beef was like irreparable between Trump and Musk, and
now they're given in more contracts. I guess it just
goes to show that those types of things, in many
ways are just opt and at the end of the day,
it's all about business, and you know, the rich helping
the rich. It's just confusing to me why they would
go with him when Trump seems to be very petty
(30:10):
about these types of fall and falling out fallings out.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Yeah, part of it is due to just the the
separation of personality and business. I mean, unfortunately, a lot
of our fellow conspiracy realist in the audience tonight know
that your coworkers aren't always your friends, right, So maybe
it's a situation like that. The people having these conversations
(30:35):
about this defense contract, it's they're going to be the
career professionals, right, the people who actually make a rock run,
the people who actually allocate funding for the Department of Defense.
It seems unlikely that the current US president and Ela
(30:56):
Musk got in a room and a reried the hatchet
and did their secret handshake, and then Donald Trump said, oh,
by the way, my lad, here's two hundred million dollars.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
That's likely check out my wife.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
Who Oh they got a second bro, I'm about to
get the level three Settle three, goone. So that's maybe
that's the basis of the new friendship. But yeah, so
I propose we do an episode on that. I don't
know if we need to do a full Epstein update,
(31:32):
but I do think we need to mention this story.
I sent a joke to us in one of our
group chats yesterday the Epstein prison video. The saga continues.
We refer to the missing minute that was mentioned in
the FBI and the DOJ's official conclusion that there was
(31:53):
no Epstein client list, and thank you for everyone who
has written in and responded to that. We also found
something for the audio video nerds in the crowd. The
news is this. The Epstein prison video we mentioned didn't
have one minute cut out. According to the metadata that
(32:15):
people are finding, the video has approximately two minutes and
fifty three seconds that were removed from one of two
clips that were stitched together. So somebody was playing with
the tape.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Yeah, In any kind of situation like that where you're
looking at video evidence, you want as raw of a
piece of videos you can get, right, So exactly what
the system spits out when it's, you know, recording something.
In this case, it does appear, Ben, it appears that
somebody opened it in a premiere pro Yeah, that that
(32:58):
is what we edited many of the stuff they don't
want you to know videos in so you know, there's
some cool stuff you can do with that. One of
the primary things is just putting two clips together and
then exporting it as one single clip, and you could say, hey,
here's the original footage.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
M hmm. Yeah, and you, Matt deserved praise for doing
such a fantastic and patient job editing out our our
hapless host discoursions, curse words, and bloopers such that it
did look like one single piece. I'm remembering just the
(33:35):
countless times that I would have to restate something or
bungle a word, and you can get seamless.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
You can do cool stuff in those DAWs, is what
they're called. But it just makes me nervous that it
even entered some kind of editing program at all before
it was delivered.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Right, Yeah, it's not a good look. Fired has a
great report on this. The Independent Journal Review has a
good report The Independent Journal Review. You can read for free.
There's no paywall. That published today, as we record, and
what they break down here is the footage, as we said,
(34:16):
was pieced together with Adobe Premiere Pro. One clip was
reduced from four hours nineteen minutes, so that's the raw, right,
that was reduced by two minutes and fifty three seconds.
The cut happens at eleven fifty eight fifty eight PM.
So just at a minute before midnight, that's where that
(34:39):
one minute gap occurs around there, So just before that
there's the cut. The second clip restarts at midnight at
twelve am.
Speaker 4 (34:49):
And is he then hanging? Is he swinging at that point? Like,
I'm sorry, I don't mean to be crass, but that's
what I picture in the fictional version of this type
of meddling. At what point is it a crucial moment?
We've talked about that. I don't think we were one
hundred percent sure. I'm wondering if there's any new intel
coming out about what portion was removed or damaged or
(35:11):
you know, sus.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Yeah, that's that's a good question. The cut to the
first clip may not necessarily mean there's additional time unaccounted for,
and this is from some independent forensic reviews. The second
clip picking up at midnight does suggest the two would overlap.
So it feels really suspicious at the get go, but
(35:37):
is not necessarily evidence that we would consider smoking gut level. Still,
you know, I all like it.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Let's talk about something. It's a little uncomfortable through our
work on true crime, and I just I just went
to a couple of places online to verify this. We
have learned that strangling a human being takes law longer
than you may imagine that you see on films. Right, Yes,
so there's I mean, there's a pretty wide range because
(36:08):
there's so many factors that go into it. But you're
looking at more like four or five minutes probably to
strangle someone unless you can incapacitate them such that you can,
you know, get something around their neck in this case
and it's it's grizzly, but tie them in a way
(36:28):
that they cannot get out right or cannot ease, they
cannot stop it.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
We're talking almost about breaking bones, like the highway bone
and stuff.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
It's just it's, Yeah, while it's still suspicious, I'm I
don't know. I'm still trying to figure out how do
you get in and out and that fast and make
it look like that, right?
Speaker 3 (36:48):
And then what other you know, what other alternative explanations
could there be for this. That's I'm with you. That's
why I that's why I feel comfortable saying this is
not smoking gun evidence. But this is a bad look
because at the very least, it draws into question the
official statements, right, because if it's not a big deal,
(37:09):
why don't you just mention it? I don't know. We'll
move on. We'd love to hear your thoughts, folks. Thanks
to everybody who's already responded to some of the Epstein news.
We want to hear your takes, especially if you are
involved in video forensics, and we always have some great
responses to this from people who work in related industries.
(37:30):
Hold on a moment, folks, We've got some breaking news.
Can we get a sound cue for that? Dylan? Yes,
thank you. Before we move on, it's important to note
that the Epstein story slash scandal continues to develop. Please
check out the Wall Street Journal's new revelation that Donald
Trump apparently contributed a salacious letter and drawing to a
(37:54):
fiftieth birthday book for a disgraced sex trafficker and financier,
Jeffrey Epstein. We also know there's a lot going on
in the wind at this moment. Please note that we
will stay tuned and we will update accordingly. Now back
to the show. Two more things I want to hit
(38:17):
before we move on. This is something that I know
a lot of us are going to write in about.
Have you been shocked by your electric bill? Get it shocked?
Electric bill. That's not our pun, but shout out to
Emily Forlini, who wrote this for PC mag just a
few days ago. It turns out that artificial intelligence data
(38:37):
centers and the cost of deploying artificial intelligence is spiking
prices in thirteen states by upwards of twenty percent. We're
talking to Delaware, Illinois, Indiana. We're talking to Maryland, Michigan,
New Jersey, North Carolina, Deep Breath, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia,
West Virginia, and the District of Columbia dropped the people.
(39:00):
This is a crazy story because in Pennsylvania, businesses are
seeing a twenty nine percent increase in their electric bill.
And you know, we're all the all four of us
recording tonight. We mainly reside in Georgia, and Georgia summers
are brutal, right, Does everybody's build spike a little in
(39:21):
some way? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Yeah, yeah. I was just having a conversation with my
dad about this, Like he was looking at his electric
bill when I was over there last time, and he
just went, Wow, that's more than I thought it would be.
Uh huh. Interesting. Interesting way.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
That's the way Dad's talked too, talking about old man
and saying, yeah, you know, it turns out I don't
also run the electric company.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Well, yeah, he's not mad at me, Like he's definitely
just last time I was out there, we were talking
about things like Georgia Power, like a big electric company
that we have here in Georgia versus he's like co
ops like Swanee or Jackson or some of those, and
just like is it better to have one or the other.
And that's when he showed me the old electric bill.
Speaker 4 (40:06):
I was not happy.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
It's it's especially considering that here in Georgia there's a
bit of legislation in the wind that would make the
price of energy or electricity cheaper for data centers, with
the discrepancy being carried on to your organic, non business consumers.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Dude, I had a conversation with an HVAC guy who's
out here because my AC is finally fixed. Who he
was talking about the thing you can sign up for
or a lot of the places offer where it's like
you get fifty dollars off every year or something if
you let them sometimes turn off your AC at non
peak hours or whatever. And the HVAC guy said, oh, dude,
(40:51):
I get calls all the time at peak hours from people.
I come out, I test their whole system, I look
at everything. It's the power company is turning off their
AC at like mid day, you know, two pm when
the sun is super hot, and he's like, I just
disconnect the thing that lets him turn it off and
it works fine.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
Nice, nice one dude, Nice one. HVAC guy. Yeah, this
is I know we're going a little bit long, but
I think it connects to many of us listening tonight,
especially Americans in the audience, because if you're wondering why
prices are increasing with electricity bills in particular, it may
indeed be due to AI and the construction of these
(41:33):
massive data centers, or the just the surge and demand
from processing power. So please write to us and let
us know what it's like in your neck of the
global woods. The last thing we want to mention was
something that is good news from Britain, accidental good news.
There was a data leak, a massive data leak that
exposed off gone assets and informants, people working in intelligence,
(41:57):
and as we mentioned earlier in our New Your War episode, again,
a lot of times those folks will end up getting
burned by the government or the agency that is I
won't even say employing, that is using them. So as
a result of this leak, thousands of Afghan nationals have
been brought to Britain in secrecy to save their lives,
(42:21):
which is, you know, leak aside, opsec aside. That's a
decent thing for the British government to do. But not
every leak turns out that way. And with that I
suggest we pause for a word from our sponsors and
then get into some other leak stories.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
And we've returned, guys. The definition of the word strive. Strive,
according to Merriam Webster, is to devote serious effort or energy.
Also to struggle in opposition. Strive. Sometimes it's combined, like
(43:02):
if you look at Oxford English and a couple of
other places. Is it is to devote serious energy, especially
in heavy opposition strive if you say it in Swedish.
Is Strava Strava. Now there is an app, a very
popular app with that name, Strava. It's a fitness app,
(43:23):
kind of like you know, your Fitbit things and all
the super popular ones here in the States. This one
is global. It's started by a couple of guys who
just had a cool idea after they were hanging out
in Harvard, you know at Harvard, I guess in Harvard
around Harvard.
Speaker 4 (43:42):
Hard stuff. Yeah, messing with the free run.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
It was started in two thousand and nine. I believe
those guys were rowers.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
You know.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
It reminds me of the Skulls movie. I think that
was Yale, but skull and Bones maybe what it was called. Anyway,
weird stuff. These guys figured, hey, let's make an app
that you can really track what you're doing, how much
you're doing it, where you're doing it, and let's make
this thing social baby, so you could share stuff like
how hard you're striving to get those fitness goals right,
(44:16):
and you can show off. You can even show off
exactly where you ran and how long you ran and
all that good stuff. You know, you know what, Let's
let people have maps of where they run. That's a
great idea. That sounds cool, dude, Yo, that sounds really great.
Let's do that.
Speaker 3 (44:32):
Okay, your wicked snap, your wicked smart maki.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
But actually it is, like on the surface, it's great.
If you go to the Strava website Strava dot com,
st r a v a dot com, you can learn
all about the cool stuff they do, and it is cool.
If if I was on a serious fitness routine thing
going right now, this would be at least up in
the top one or two competitive apps that I'd be
(44:57):
interested in. The only thing is probably wouldn't be that
excited because of the social aspects. It is good to know.
If you're like me and you don't want social aspects
to be shared, you can just turn those things off
in the app and that's not a problem. Cool. The
app still works, great, it's awesome. But if you don't
turn off the social aspects, uh oh, then you are
(45:21):
gonna share with people if you decide to all of
your location information, a ton of information, especially and specifically
where you are running when you're deciding to share that
kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
Even worse than that one website for Square, remember four square.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
Which was just which was just essentially ayre with whatever,
like Yeah, you have posted the.
Speaker 3 (45:46):
Location and the time that you were at and there
in real time, and it was gamified such that you know,
if you went to the Dave and Busters all the time,
you could eventually become the mayor of Dave and Busters,
not a king. Because the US is still a democracy.
But the thing that got me about it, I think
we all initially had this reaction was looking at this
(46:07):
from admittedly a paranoid baseline. I remember distinctly. I think
it was you and me matt At looking at it
and going, so, this just tells people when to rob you.
That's the game, It's like, is that the game of
this thing? So, but this sounds even more a more sophisticated,
accelerated version of what for Square is. And I think
(46:30):
one of the first questions would be are the social
settings on by default?
Speaker 2 (46:38):
I don't know. I assume they are somewhat or like,
as you're setting up the app, like with many others,
you give it access to certain things, right like your
location data and then your privacy settings. You can go
in and change those after it's all set up. But
I haven't actually used it, so I don't know that.
All I know is that some folks who are using
this thing are accidentally giving way their locations, and unfortunately
(47:03):
their locations are really important because they are protecting high
value human beings like the Swedish royal family. So here
we go. This is from NBC News July tenth, Swedish
bodyguards fitness app data reveals private locations of royal family.
(47:24):
I'm going to read just a couple of quotes from
this and then we can talk about it. The National
Security Service there in Sweden said it's investigating reports that
data shared by bodyguards on a fitness app Strava had
exposed the private locations of some of the country's most
powerful figures. It comes after the Swedish newspaper doggins dag
ns nithe I don't know how you say it and
(47:47):
y h e t er. They reported earlier that seven
members of the security service were sharing details on their
running and cycling routes on this fitness app, inadvertently revealing
the locations of the King in Queen's personal vacations. So
like where the King and Queen are hanging out when
they're in the Seychelles, or where they're in northern Sweden
(48:11):
in a place called Storlin, or you know, out at
the French riviera on a private luxury villa, which is fine, like, hey,
that's where the King and Queen are. But again, Ben,
as you said, if somebody has ill intent towards one
of these VIPs, then you just have to load up
your Strava app and check out specific people if you
(48:33):
know where to look and who to look for. But
it gets even worse. Guys, just before all of this
came out, the Prime Minister in Sweden's location was given
away I think at thirty or thirty five specific places,
including his home address, including everywhere he goes on runs,
(48:53):
including like other important people's houses and places of business
that he went to visit. Just locations that you don't
want to give away for security purposes, especially if you're
in the business of protecting these folks. Probably not a
good idea. And this isn't even close to the first
(49:15):
time Strava has had a problem with this, just like
other fitness apps and other location tracking apps have had problems,
but this one specifically. There's this cool thing that has
happened in the past where someone will go on a run, right,
and they will draw a picture on the map with
their running. Does that make sense, like you could draw
a picture of a bunny rabbit depending on where you run,
(49:36):
because it actually draws out with GPS coordinates the pictures
you create. That's fun, that's cool. But another thing that
happened back in twenty twenty two military bases in Israel,
like the full bases. The inner workings of the base
were outlined through some of this Strava app stuff because
(49:57):
personnel were walking through the base, and now you can know, oh,
here's the ingress egress in all of these areas and
where you can actually turn. It's almost like giving somebody
a blueprint of something.
Speaker 3 (50:08):
It's exactly like that.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
Yeah. Well, like in the past, if you just had
satellite imagery and you imagine you're an opposing force or something. Okay,
I can see there's a large building there, but I
have no idea actually what's inside or how you move
through it or anything like that. Right now you have
this data overlay there you go, and this is something
that you can't really walk back.
Speaker 3 (50:31):
Right For instance, the bodyguards here, assuming they still have
employment with the royal family, they can turn off this
stuff so it won't happen in the future. But they can't.
I guess they could try to remove it from the
system with help of from the company, remove that information
(50:54):
in that data, but it's not going to remove it
from the minds or the servers of anybody who already
accessed it in the past. I don't know, man, this
is such a logistical headache because now you've got to
imagine all the conventional regular routes have to be rethought, right,
(51:15):
You've got to fight a new vacation spot.
Speaker 4 (51:17):
I don't know, man, Well, it goes even beyond this.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
Guys. In twenty twenty three, there was a I don't
know his exact position. He's essentially in the navy, but
he was a commander for the Russian Navy, essentially specifically
for submarines. He had his Strava profile open when he
was walking around, and it suspected that that app gave
away his specific location and he was assassinated. It's suspected
(51:45):
of that. There was very recently somebody in Kiev who
was assassinated and I don't know if Strava has anything
to do with that, but it looks pretty similar to
some of the reportings. Like the initial reportings, they located
this guy in a parking lot and just took him
out really quickly. There it goes back to during the
(52:07):
last election, everybody, Kamala Harris, President Trump, everybody was being
tracked with Strava because of the secret service that was
around them.
Speaker 3 (52:16):
It's like, this is crazy, It's it's nuts too, because
this can happen in so many ways. I agree with you, Matt,
that this would be a timely episode. I think it's again,
it's easy for a lot of folks, not even royal family,
right or royal family adjacent, It's so easy for a
(52:38):
lot of folks to forget how public various applications will
make your location. Forgive the accidental rhyme there. But you know,
I think about that when we look at the big,
the big social media things, right that always give you
the opportunity to post your location. Hey, everybody in the
(52:59):
neighborhood who might want to steal this car, don't worry.
I'm in Botswata. Here's a fun picture of me and
some animals. You know, you go, It's it's tough, you
gotta be you gotta be careful with these kind of things.
But I it feels like these are just going to
continue in the future, right, something like this is going
(53:20):
to inevitably happen. Similar to when we were talking about
those poor folks who just missed their families, you know,
on various submarines, and we're writing a letter to their
loved win because they're in a very difficult long distance
relationship and then boom, someone said, you know some enemy forces, like,
oh they are by horror moves.
Speaker 2 (53:42):
Yeah, yeah, really somebody working out as hard as they
can on a sub and oh there's the location of
that nuclear submarine that the like probably not probably not
going to get the cordinate's out from the sub because
of the signal or whatever. But it's fine. It goes
back to twenty seventeen. I completely missed this, I think.
(54:04):
I don't know if we talked about it. I can't
remember talking about it. But there was a medium article
written by a person named Drew Robb who looked at
this thing called the Global heat Map, which is something
that was created out of Strava's global network of athletes.
According to the article, and it is a global map
(54:24):
of runs that people had taken, and it included a
full walkthrough essentially of United States bases in Syria and Afghanistan,
as well as the Royal Navy's fast Lane Base which
Fasla n Base. Major major security flaws. So let's just
(54:46):
keep our eyes and ears open on this. Let us
know if you use the app or a fitness app
or a location tracker that you're excited about that we
need to know about.
Speaker 3 (54:55):
The post your location to us right, give us like
a your social security number, blood type, list of childhood fears,
what else? Favorite favorite location on your nuclear sub Where
do you guys work out? Yeah? How close is it
to the bay? Oh gosh, that's dark humor. But it's
(55:17):
a real thing, and it's something I believe we can
all agree, everyone including us, needs to think about more often.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
Agreed. Well, that's it. Thanks for listening, y'all.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
Yes, thank you so much for joining us, friends and neighbors,
Fellow conspiracy realists. We can't wait to hear if you
successfully nail that job in the Chinese National Park system.
Tell us about your experiences with Wi Fu companions. Take
a Yeti blood oath with us, or even better, tell
us what a YETI blood oath should be. We cannot,
(55:53):
oh gosh, and we welcome everybody's observations about electric bills.
Those effect all all of us, regardless of demographic. You
can find us any number of ways. You can always
write us an email, you can give us a call,
and you can find us on the lines. Don't post
your location.
Speaker 4 (56:11):
No, please. You can reach us to the handle conspiracy
stuff where we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group
Here's where it gets crazy. On x FKA, Twitter and
on YouTube, or we have video content for you to
absolutely dive into if you want to hit us up
on Instagram and TikTok. However, we are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (56:31):
If you want to call us, our number is one
eight three three STDWYTK. When you call in, give yourself
a cool nickname and let us know if we can
use your name and message on the air. Within that message,
if you'd instead like to send us words, attachments, pictures, anything,
why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (56:50):
We are the entities that beat each piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet unafreed. Sometimes the void
writes back, Dylan, did you go the An estimated eighty
percent of US households have UNO card decks. Anyway. Conspiracy
at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (57:28):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nola.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want
you to know. If you are hearing our strange news
segment the Evening it publishes Welcome to July twenty first,
twenty twenty five. We have so much to get to. Obviously,
(00:53):
a lot of things are happening in the world, and
we couldn't think of a better way to kick off
the show than to commit to our YETI blood oath.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
I don't know what that means, Ben.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Weirdly enough, it's not a code, Matt. It turns out
that a Denver seminary has met some deep internal division
due to a YETI blood oath. This was reported in
the Pillar just yesterday. We're recording on July sixteenth. This
came to us July fifteenth. The clergy in the Archdiocese
(01:26):
of Denver are intensely divided over a blood oath ceremony
involving a vice rector and seminarians during a ski trip.
It happened last year, but the news finally broke to
the public. Here's what happened. There was a group of seminarians,
you know, divinity students basically studying at Denver Saint John
Vienny Theological Seminary, and Friar John neppel In EPIL took
(01:54):
the gang on a trip. During this trip, they were
woken in the middle of the night and quote invited
to individually swear a blood oath in a ceremony involving
a dagger and a man in a Yeti costume.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
I mean, I'm not the idea of a Yeti priest.
That's cool.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
None of us are Catholics, so we're not experts on this,
but that that's not the usual thing, right.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I don't think so. WHOA wait, I just clicked on
the link.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Yeah, check out the costume.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Yeah, the Yeti costume is pretty intense cosplay level stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Whoa yeah, this is okay. So video of this was
sent to the Pillar by multiple sources in the archdiocese
and the seminarians were quote told to scream as if
in pain, before returning with a bloodied cloth wrapped around
their hand and their mouths taped shut to the room
where other people are waiting to go swear the blood oath.
(02:58):
This was a farce, was a prank. They assured the
public and the lay folk that no one is in
fact a YETI worshiper in this archdiocese.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
I think maybe I am now a YETI worshiper.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
I'm started. Yeah, yeah, time to convert.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
That's a fun theater thing, like the initiation, the secret initiation,
where everybody's waiting in one room. One person goes in
at a time, and then you hear them scream, and
then you've got a bloodied cloth as they exit.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
And yeah the mouth.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, I mean, that's just theater. That's just fun.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
That's just fun. The friar did apologize and quote acknowledged
his imprudence, apologized to the archbishop and the seminarians involved.
While we get it, come on, man, what's wrong with
a little fun. No one was getting hurt. Like, did
the friar apologize for being the fun friar? You know
(04:00):
what I mean? My bad, Sorry, guys, I guess you
don't want these googly eyes on the crucifix anymore.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
I put googly eyes on them so they're not so scary.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
I put googly eyes on my rumba. But then it
kind of went rogue and stopped doing what it was
supposed to do, so I had to put it down.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
No, it was an old Yeller situation. It really was.
Maybe it got Maybe the googly eyes brought it too
close to AI. That's something we're going to be returning
to in a couple of a couple of stories this week.
We're also going to be talking about security leaks. We're
going to be talking weirdly enough about Waifu stuff, and
(04:42):
of course electric bills and maybe a mention of Epstein.
But before we do any of.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
That, I want to sit here about Epstein. Stop talking
about Epstein.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
You are a person. Let it go.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
We're done with that guy.
Speaker 4 (04:57):
He's been dead long times. Sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
We're gonna pause. We'll get to it. We'll pause for
word from our sponsor, and then we're going to return
with some fascinating stories. One of which we were actually
talking about off air earlier.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
Happens and we have return with the trio of the
strangest of news is that I bring to you today.
We're going to start with a quickie and an easy one.
And this just came to mind, I think because of
a conversation we had with the fair Dylan the Tennessee
(05:38):
pal slash Tennessee Chainsaw massacre Fagan about as a version
to competitive card games, and specifically UN came up. Maybe
not specifically for Dylan, but that is the one that
comes to mind when I think we all think of
like family games that can get a little heated, perhaps
(05:58):
and if I'm mistake, and we recently talked about how
the Mattel Company, who owns Uno did come out with
an official stance on the playing a plus something on
top of another plus something.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Yes, right, and everybody ignored them.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Right, they said, nah, not cool. Before we go on,
I have no problem with family rules either, house rules, right, Like, yeah,
do do what thou wiltst what you got, matt.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
This past weekend we played Uno, myself, my mother, my father,
my girlfriend, her daughter, and my son. We're all playing Uno.
We're hanging out and that plus draw to thing came up,
and that's applying and all of that. Who has to
draw and all this, Well I went into magic rules.
Well you've already played the draw too, so that goes
(06:49):
that is on the stack, and that occurs someone plays
another drug to We went into this long thing and
everybody in the end he got kind of mad at
each other.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
Oh yeah, brother, let me just say I have experienced
the wrath, the gaming wrath of your lady friend, and
they're super intense about these kinds of things. So I
can see that getting a little heated. For sure.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
I've missed that that part of the experience and look
forward to it. But I got to tell you, yeah,
even folks, as you know listening in, even the most
loving of parents and siblings and familial relations will turn
on you with uno, especially when it's time to draw
those four cards and predict that color. It gets gets wild.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Well, you know what's funny. I always think the concept
that in a gaming situation, you're supposed to like not
play well against people, you know, like your kids get
mad at you because you played the game right, I
just does that blows up. I don't understand. That just
seems to be counter to the whole point of playing
a competitive game. It happens with me and my kid
(07:55):
with Mario Kart, which we are huge fans of. My
kid has absolutely attained an equal footing to me in
that game that I've been playing for over a decade
and takes it real seriously and gets real mad when
I shell them. But we are talking about Uno, and
specifically a new era of Uno being unveiled on the
(08:15):
Las Vegas Strip in Sin City. George Alakiki, writing for
news dot com dot Au in Australia, said the family
friendly game has caused drama around the dining table for years,
but it's now drawing a wild card at the poker table.
Beloved game Uno is set to debut in one Las
(08:36):
Vegas casino with plans for more. But there's a catch
that catches no gambling allowed.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Mattel has given the green light to a Uno Social
club that is located above the gaming floors at the
Palms Casino in Las Vegas, off of the strip, with
plans to expand it to more gambling locations. There are
different variations of the game that will be on offer
at different tables during this little pop up period of
(09:06):
July eighteenth through twentieth, so a couple days from now.
As we sit here recording. The catch, however, is what
I said, Guests wanting to gamble on the games despite
the venue will not be allowed. That comes from the
article I quoted. The decision is part of Mattel's main
objective to provide a elevated social experience at casinos instead
(09:29):
of real money games. A spokesperson for the company, Ray Adler,
who's the vice president and global head of games, said
we created unosocial clubs to reimagine what game night can be,
bringing people together for real world fun, connection and a
bit of friendly competition. Then Social Club in Las Vegas
is just the beginning, and we're excited to see how
(09:49):
these new experiences inspire players to show up, play hard,
and make unforgettable memories. But I don't know, guys, I
could see this being pretty divisive, you know, being such
a family game, and this is a little bit of
an odd publicity stunt if you ask me, I.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Think it's going to work. Maybe not to the degree
that Mattel hopes, but it's it's partially because Uno is
a very easy game to learn and it is fun
to play. But I also think there's going to be
illegal gambling because it's Vegas. You can't. You can't stop
people from walking by and seeing, you know, Matt's family,
(10:27):
or maybe if I'm playing with you guys, ever seeing
one person at the table and going, mmm, I don't know, man,
I got I got five hundred on the kid.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Remember how boring the World Series of Poker could be.
Sometimes it's super super exciting if you're watching it.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
But the personality is too right, like, yeah, yeah, but
most people.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Why are some people allowed to wear sunglasses in that?
It seems like a cheat, seems like a hiding, like bad,
bad medicine.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
But I imagine if it's just a bunch of people
in a series game of uno, like they're taking it
so serious and nobody's betting at the table, but behind
them with the camera's watching. Just what you said, Ben,
there's a whole secondary market where everybody's betting.
Speaker 4 (11:13):
Well, yeah, I mean the first time I ever did
any kind of gambling, well before we all went to
Las Vegas together, certainly was my first time. I think
it might have been at least one of y'all's first time.
The only experience of gambling I'd ever had was at
like a cabin with friends situation on like a dice
game like farkel or one four twenty four, or a
little you know, friendly craps or whatever. I mean, a
(11:35):
little friendly poker game. Yea, it was that, but it
was we put in some money. There was some money
to be made. We have a lot of people, and
then the buy in is low. But with all those people,
you can walk away with a little bit of cash.
So I have no doubt that people have been gambling
on you, you know, for years in these types of settings.
There's no reason not to.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
I mean people who like to gamble. This is not
casting dispersion. We know it can be a serious problem
for on any but people who genuinely like to gamble
will gamble on anything, right, Like what's that? There was
a billboard I can't remember if we're talking about this
on air. There was a billboard I saw a while
back that said be careful. You know, something like twenty
(12:15):
percent of people who begin gambling end up with a
serious problem. And then I immediately thought, come on, man,
if you're someone who gambles, you're going to take those odds.
Speaker 4 (12:25):
Bet on I like to bet on myself, guys. I
mean speaking of betting on anything, A big predictor that's
used a lot in these days and things like politics
or awards or whatever are the betting markets. Like there
are these apps that you can literally bet on any
combination of factors in various world events like Calshee, I
think is the big one. So a lot of times
(12:46):
when there's a big election coming up or an award
or whatever like the Oscars, you start to see the
odds favor certain things leading up to it. That tends
to be a pretty good predictor, because you know a
lot of times people that bet in that way and
at that scale are okay at it, you know, to
some degree, until they're not. Of course, there was some
(13:07):
There were some influencers that were invited to these kind
of events. One named is Zuos, who has one hundred
and thirty four thousand Instagram followers. I guess he's an
UNO influencer. Said, good thing there was no betting, because
I would have lost a lot of money. The thought
of the wildly popular game enjoyed by children and adults alike,
arrival casinos is scary for some, though, says the article.
(13:31):
Despite a strict ban on betting on the games, there
are fears it's now just one step away, and to
be clear, it would be in violation of the Nevada
Gaming Commissions regulations. It is not they have to approve
the games that are bet on be based on various
factors and odds and things like that exactly. So, Yeah,
(13:51):
let's move on to another strange news story. This one
has a little bit in common spiritually with I think
a story that you're bringing to us a bit later, Ben,
bizarre Chinese national park ad for wild man job draws
thousands of applicants in shino Jia National Park. Forgive me,
I'm not a Chinese Ormandarin speaker. A bizarre job listing
(14:15):
has come up in the Central China region for wild
men looking to be hired to roam that national park
and interact with visitors and essentially be half naked, making
grunting sounds and essentially honoring the legacy of a lot
of the kind of Yeti and wild man type of
(14:37):
myths that you know are very popular and prominent in
that part.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Of the world.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Ben, there was one we talked about very recently in
our Cryptids kind of continuing series that seems to check
some boxes for this theme.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Yeah, the Yeert We did an episode recently on on this.
Think of it like the Bigfoot or the Yetti of
interior China, And it's a fascinating conversation because, unlike the
United States and a lot of other Western countries, in
China this was investigations into this creature were taken very
(15:13):
seriously and it became a big part of the culture.
The best way to put it, I was talking with
our daily Zeitgeispals about this is imagine if imagine if
we went to the White House and said, hey, can
we have hundreds of millions of dollars to hunt Bigfoot?
And the White House said, yeah, go go. That's what
(15:36):
happened in China.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
Yeah, it does seem to be the case. The article
is reverencing this program. Don't specifically mention the erin they
just talk a bit more about just this the legendary
wild man, China's equivalent of the Bigfoot scene or spotted
historically in remote mountain regions and some of these forested areas.
So let's go a little bit more into the specifics
(15:59):
of the job. From The Independent over in the UK,
the job listing offers five hundred wand sixteen nine dollars
and sixty cents a day to act as non player characters,
essentially live action performers to roam in the park, mimicking
the famous legend of wild men of the region. The
organizers are using the fan groups on short video platforms
(16:22):
like du Yen and Shao Hongshu to find people interested
in applying for the job. According to China Daily, and
they have thus far received over ten thousand applicants, but
only sixteen folks are going to make the cut. So yeah.
This is in Hubei Province, by the way, the shang
Xia Forestreet district known for mountainous terrain, lush greenery, and
(16:47):
a lot of mystic folklore surrounding these types of creatures.
The creature is often described as being about two meters tall,
covered in reddish brown hair, and making haunting wo wu calls.
They're so called wild men are a long standing part
of Chinese mythology, often likened to the Bigfoot or the
yet heat.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
And Yerin, by the way, translates to wild men.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
There you go, that's the one, Thanks Ben, perfect full sir.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
It sounds like an awesome gig, right, especially if you're
a little younger and you enjoy that kind of stuff,
and man, that sounds so much fun, like scaring tourists.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
It's a great thing to say on a date too,
you know. So what's your job? I'm glad you asked.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
It's It is open to all ages and gender is
the only requirement being having a healthy body, So no fatties.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
That's probably code. That's probably code for height requirement too.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
And they will okay maybe so that could well be yeah,
I imagine just if you're out, because you're probably out
there for hours, right, like, yes, running around with the hair.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
There are some if you want to check out the
Independent article of folks dressed up in these costplays, much
like the yettie priest, and they are Candidates should be
comfortable being fed by tourists, what little kinky, preferably able
to eat raw food, and ideally enjoy isolation or the
chance to act out their real nature. While the employer
(18:23):
provides accident insurance. The selected participants must bring their own tents,
arranged meals, and be ready to run if confronted by
unknown creatures.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Well well okay, hold on, yeah, Well the images I'm
seeing here correct me if I'm wrong here, guys, but
I'm seeing more Neanderthal what might be described as caveman
correct stuff rather than wild man, you know, fully hair.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Some of them are here suits, some of them are
half naked. Some of them look more like indigenous types perhaps,
But yeah, there's there's there's a mix of interpretations. I guess.
The one that I'm seeing here on a let's see,
I think it's a Twitter feed is a video showing
some folks actually acting it out. Some of them have
these like big sticks, some of them have their faces painted.
(19:14):
So there are various kind of ways of doing this.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
You got to diversify, you know what I mean, because
you want people to go more often, right, you want
people to return. So maybe you can make it there's
something very clever in here. Maybe you can make it
a Pokemon esque or collectible kind of game. I take
the kids, take the kids, and you see the fig
(19:39):
leaf one day, you see the yauguay another day in
an ogre, and then a yurin.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
What if you could teach a urine to play Uno
with you?
Speaker 4 (19:48):
Oh, that's a good mashup.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
They need to have bigger cards.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
Well, okay, we got one quick one that I wanted
to add at the very ends here this one coming
from viceed human skin teddy bear caused a panic at
a California gas station. If you happen to be cruising
through Victorville, California this past Sunday, shout out to on
cinema fans. By the way, Victorville is a big thing
in that YouTube series with Tim Heideger and on the
(20:13):
guy that does Neil Hamburger whose name is escaping me.
This past Sunday, you may have noticed a whole lot
of cops gathered around a teddy bear that looked like
it crawled out of a horror movie. But don't worry,
it wasn't actually as horrifying I find as it first seemed.
It was just some oddly placed and admittedly gruesome art.
Authorities responded to a call about a teddy bear that
appeared to be made of human skin was found near
(20:34):
a gas station on appropriately bare Valley Road. A deputy
corner was brought in, presumably with the same level of
urgency one might bring an archaeologist to a newly discovered
cursed sarcophagus, and confirmed that the object's skin was thankfully
not of human origin at all. A forensic pathologist double
checked and yep, it still was not a teddy bear
made of human skin. Oh boy, is it hideous looking? Yikes? Yeah,
(20:59):
you all check if you have that link in front
of you for the vice piece. It is like something
that was like Jeffrey Dahmer's Teddy Bear or who's the
one that made things out of human skin? Was that Dahmer?
Speaker 3 (21:11):
That was ed Gean.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
Yeah, it looks like something he would have slept with,
cuddled up with at night times. It was the work
of a South Carolina based artist named Robert Kelly, who
owns a company called Dark Seed Creations, a Netsy shop wearing.
Kelly designs and manufactures realistic looking horror themeed props. Looking
for a fetal skeleton in a baroque picture frame, They've
got you covered. The bear made of human skin is
(21:36):
one of Kelly's creations, and it is again pretty damn
convincing and quite quite grizzly. One hundred and sixty five
bucks will get you one of these. Not bad. It's
a nice piece. I don't think I want it displayed
in my house. It's really really gross.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
He does make green style human skin lampshades, including human faces,
of course he does.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
Yeah, so give the artists some love that South Carolina
based artist Robert Kelly. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna wrap
it up for my segment today. Let's take a quick break,
we'll hear a word from our sponsor, and we'll be
back with more strange names for you.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
And we have returned. I've constructed a little bit of
a narrative through line here that I think will feed
into some of the some of the stuff we'll discuss
with you, Matt in just a bit. For now, we're
going to look at Ai. Mecca Hitler aka rock over
(22:39):
on X is now launching something new, and it's something
that speaks to our earlier conversations with many of our
fellow listeners regarding people having intense emotional relationships with lll ms.
Folks who feel that they have like that guy from
(23:01):
Google a few years back. Folks who feel that they
have reached a sentience and intelligence not only connected with it,
but fallen in love with it, or it's become their
best friend or their spiritual guide, or it has revealed
to them that they are in fact the Messiah. Because
the LM is essentially a yes and machine, it's a
(23:23):
terrible friend in that respect, as well as a terrible therapist.
But could it be a lover? That's the question that
we learned from decrypt dot co in a story that
came out just yesterday. I'll give us the title first,
just for initial reactions. Artificial Gooning Intelligence Elon musk x
(23:45):
ai launches wai Fu companions.
Speaker 4 (23:48):
For grock gooning. You say, oh, I think it's a
little bit of a broad term. I think it means
different things to different people. But doesn't it just mean
like really long sessions of self love self care.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
I'm a relatively square entity in a lot of ways,
and I remember on Behind the Bastards, Robert Evans introduced
the term and explained it to me in a way
I didn't understand. So I'm not sure I think your
definition is correct. I don't know if Robert was just
messing with me, because he gave me a definition that meant,
(24:23):
how do we put it, delicately, multiple people pleasuring themselves together.
See that.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
I think that that's my point. It's a little bit
like it can be different things, because that's more what.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Like a like the old circle jerk right right?
Speaker 1 (24:40):
No?
Speaker 4 (24:40):
Yeah, to me, I've more understood it as like a
form of like extended sessions of like self deprivation of
pleasure in a way. But I've never heard of group, yeah,
the group version of it. Let's just see what the
old Internet has to say. Really, yeah, check urban dictionary
often associated with online communities. Okay, I think.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
The primary thing is it is associated with sex.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
Prolong your self simulation with the goal of delaying or
avoiding orgasm is the rough term urban dictionary.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
And yeah, that's what I saw as well. What we'd
love to do is here your made up terms for
gooning right to a conspiracy atiheartradio dot com. Here's the
story we're trying to get to, all right. Grock has
added on the heels of its anti semitic meltdown, Grock
has added a series of interactive AI companions for grock subscribers.
(25:34):
You pay thirty bucks a month and you play something
that's kind of like the Japanese relationship video games, where
you have to take certain actions to reach a level
of favorability with this companion. You can also see this
in video games like boulders Gate three or something. Right.
You have to you have to make your do things
(25:56):
that your companion likes and your relationship and relationship buffs, right,
and when you get to okay, so x Ai has
rolled out three different subscription based characters. There's Annie, who
is a blonde anime wife wu with a goth I'm
(26:17):
quoting here, goth and old fashioned style wearing a tight
black horset dress with thigh high fish nets. Uh. And
then there's also Rudy, who is a red panda in
a pink hoodie designed for wholesome conversations. The thing is
with Annie, A and I, when you get to level
three whatever that is, you unlock the not safe for
(26:37):
work content with your Twitter girlfriend and just to get
in front of this no judgment, folks, but there is
no level three not safe for work content with the
red panda yet, thank god, so.
Speaker 4 (26:53):
Far, there is nothing sacred. I don't believe the red
Panda sacred.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Guys, Guys. I found that what goon actually stands for.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Is it an acronyms?
Speaker 4 (27:03):
An acronym?
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Oh, yeah, it's it's the Grand Order of Occidental Nighthawks.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
Okay, it's.
Speaker 3 (27:13):
Squad. Yeah, it's real.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
We are the Good Squad and we're coming to town bebeb.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
So this is I wanted to bring this to everyone's
attention if you haven't heard about it yet, friends and neighbors,
because this seems to be the harbinger of much larger
controversies on the horizon. Uh the the company has been
taking a lot of heat for missteps with Grock and
(27:39):
with you know, other chatbots on Twitter for quite some
time now. This also is happening in step with something
we talked about off air, a two hundred million dollar
contract awarded to Grock from the Department of Defense earlier
this Monday. So like Lie fourteenth, it happened so quickly,
(28:02):
and I think we can all say, without sounding like Luddites,
that this can be concerning because imagine you're an adolescent, right,
and you're growing romantic interest and inclinations in whatever your
bag is, and you meet some LLM or some chat
(28:23):
bot esque thing that purports to provide you that sort
of interaction you're looking for. Will the standards be realistic?
Will this damage your prospects of interacting with human romantic partners?
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Right?
Speaker 3 (28:40):
If that's your baseline, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (28:42):
Absolutely. I mean it's not much different from like peorn addiction,
I would say, in that it can cultivate a very
unrealistic view of intimacy because it's so self serving. Everything's
designed to feed your exact ego and your exact needs,
quote unquote, and there's very little compromise, which isn't really
(29:04):
how human relationships.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Work, right. It's concerning too, especially in the ways that
social media has arguably made folks more self centric, right
and more. I don't think there's anything wrong with being individualistic,
but maybe self involved past the threshold of helpfulness to
(29:27):
oneself add society. We'll move on because there's other stuff
we want to get to in this amount of time
we have. I do believe we can make an episode
about that defense contract and about the high level state
actor embrace of AI tools. I think that's a full episode.
So this is a weird way to tease that.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
Are they friends again? I don't understand. I thought that
the beef was like irreparable between Trump and Musk, and
now they're given in more contracts. I guess it just
goes to show that those types of things, in many
ways are just opt and at the end of the day,
it's all about business, and you know, the rich helping
the rich. It's just confusing to me why they would
go with him when Trump seems to be very petty
(30:10):
about these types of fall and falling out fallings out.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Yeah, part of it is due to just the the
separation of personality and business. I mean, unfortunately, a lot
of our fellow conspiracy realist in the audience tonight know
that your coworkers aren't always your friends, right, So maybe
it's a situation like that. The people having these conversations
(30:35):
about this defense contract, it's they're going to be the
career professionals, right, the people who actually make a rock run,
the people who actually allocate funding for the Department of Defense.
It seems unlikely that the current US president and Ela
(30:56):
Musk got in a room and a reried the hatchet
and did their secret handshake, and then Donald Trump said, oh,
by the way, my lad, here's two hundred million dollars.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
That's likely check out my wife.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
Who Oh they got a second bro, I'm about to
get the level three Settle three, goone. So that's maybe
that's the basis of the new friendship. But yeah, so
I propose we do an episode on that. I don't
know if we need to do a full Epstein update,
(31:32):
but I do think we need to mention this story.
I sent a joke to us in one of our
group chats yesterday the Epstein prison video. The saga continues.
We refer to the missing minute that was mentioned in
the FBI and the DOJ's official conclusion that there was
(31:53):
no Epstein client list, and thank you for everyone who
has written in and responded to that. We also found
something for the audio video nerds in the crowd. The
news is this. The Epstein prison video we mentioned didn't
have one minute cut out. According to the metadata that
(32:15):
people are finding, the video has approximately two minutes and
fifty three seconds that were removed from one of two
clips that were stitched together. So somebody was playing with
the tape.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Yeah, In any kind of situation like that where you're
looking at video evidence, you want as raw of a
piece of videos you can get, right, So exactly what
the system spits out when it's, you know, recording something.
In this case, it does appear, Ben, it appears that
somebody opened it in a premiere pro Yeah, that that
(32:58):
is what we edited many of the stuff they don't
want you to know videos in so you know, there's
some cool stuff you can do with that. One of
the primary things is just putting two clips together and
then exporting it as one single clip, and you could say, hey,
here's the original footage.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
M hmm. Yeah, and you, Matt deserved praise for doing
such a fantastic and patient job editing out our our
hapless host discoursions, curse words, and bloopers such that it
did look like one single piece. I'm remembering just the
(33:35):
countless times that I would have to restate something or
bungle a word, and you can get seamless.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
You can do cool stuff in those DAWs, is what
they're called. But it just makes me nervous that it
even entered some kind of editing program at all before
it was delivered.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Right, Yeah, it's not a good look. Fired has a
great report on this. The Independent Journal Review has a
good report The Independent Journal Review. You can read for free.
There's no paywall. That published today, as we record, and
what they break down here is the footage, as we said,
(34:16):
was pieced together with Adobe Premiere Pro. One clip was
reduced from four hours nineteen minutes, so that's the raw, right,
that was reduced by two minutes and fifty three seconds.
The cut happens at eleven fifty eight fifty eight PM.
So just at a minute before midnight, that's where that
(34:39):
one minute gap occurs around there, So just before that
there's the cut. The second clip restarts at midnight at
twelve am.
Speaker 4 (34:49):
And is he then hanging? Is he swinging at that point? Like,
I'm sorry, I don't mean to be crass, but that's
what I picture in the fictional version of this type
of meddling. At what point is it a crucial moment?
We've talked about that. I don't think we were one
hundred percent sure. I'm wondering if there's any new intel
coming out about what portion was removed or damaged or
(35:11):
you know, sus.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Yeah, that's that's a good question. The cut to the
first clip may not necessarily mean there's additional time unaccounted for,
and this is from some independent forensic reviews. The second
clip picking up at midnight does suggest the two would overlap.
So it feels really suspicious at the get go, but
(35:37):
is not necessarily evidence that we would consider smoking gut level. Still,
you know, I all like it.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Let's talk about something. It's a little uncomfortable through our
work on true crime, and I just I just went
to a couple of places online to verify this. We
have learned that strangling a human being takes law longer
than you may imagine that you see on films. Right, Yes,
so there's I mean, there's a pretty wide range because
(36:08):
there's so many factors that go into it. But you're
looking at more like four or five minutes probably to
strangle someone unless you can incapacitate them such that you can,
you know, get something around their neck in this case
and it's it's grizzly, but tie them in a way
(36:28):
that they cannot get out right or cannot ease, they
cannot stop it.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
We're talking almost about breaking bones, like the highway bone
and stuff.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
It's just it's, Yeah, while it's still suspicious, I'm I
don't know. I'm still trying to figure out how do
you get in and out and that fast and make
it look like that, right?
Speaker 3 (36:48):
And then what other you know, what other alternative explanations
could there be for this. That's I'm with you. That's
why I that's why I feel comfortable saying this is
not smoking gun evidence. But this is a bad look
because at the very least, it draws into question the
official statements, right, because if it's not a big deal,
(37:09):
why don't you just mention it? I don't know. We'll
move on. We'd love to hear your thoughts, folks. Thanks
to everybody who's already responded to some of the Epstein news.
We want to hear your takes, especially if you are
involved in video forensics, and we always have some great
responses to this from people who work in related industries.
(37:30):
Hold on a moment, folks, We've got some breaking news.
Can we get a sound cue for that? Dylan? Yes,
thank you. Before we move on, it's important to note
that the Epstein story slash scandal continues to develop. Please
check out the Wall Street Journal's new revelation that Donald
Trump apparently contributed a salacious letter and drawing to a
(37:54):
fiftieth birthday book for a disgraced sex trafficker and financier,
Jeffrey Epstein. We also know there's a lot going on
in the wind at this moment. Please note that we
will stay tuned and we will update accordingly. Now back
to the show. Two more things I want to hit
(38:17):
before we move on. This is something that I know
a lot of us are going to write in about.
Have you been shocked by your electric bill? Get it shocked?
Electric bill. That's not our pun, but shout out to
Emily Forlini, who wrote this for PC mag just a
few days ago. It turns out that artificial intelligence data
(38:37):
centers and the cost of deploying artificial intelligence is spiking
prices in thirteen states by upwards of twenty percent. We're
talking to Delaware, Illinois, Indiana. We're talking to Maryland, Michigan,
New Jersey, North Carolina, Deep Breath, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia,
West Virginia, and the District of Columbia dropped the people.
(39:00):
This is a crazy story because in Pennsylvania, businesses are
seeing a twenty nine percent increase in their electric bill.
And you know, we're all the all four of us
recording tonight. We mainly reside in Georgia, and Georgia summers
are brutal, right, Does everybody's build spike a little in
(39:21):
some way? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (39:22):
Yeah, yeah. I was just having a conversation with my
dad about this, Like he was looking at his electric
bill when I was over there last time, and he
just went, Wow, that's more than I thought it would be.
Uh huh. Interesting. Interesting way.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
That's the way Dad's talked too, talking about old man
and saying, yeah, you know, it turns out I don't
also run the electric company.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Well, yeah, he's not mad at me, Like he's definitely
just last time I was out there, we were talking
about things like Georgia Power, like a big electric company
that we have here in Georgia versus he's like co
ops like Swanee or Jackson or some of those, and
just like is it better to have one or the other.
And that's when he showed me the old electric bill.
Speaker 4 (40:06):
I was not happy.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
It's it's especially considering that here in Georgia there's a
bit of legislation in the wind that would make the
price of energy or electricity cheaper for data centers, with
the discrepancy being carried on to your organic, non business consumers.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Dude, I had a conversation with an HVAC guy who's
out here because my AC is finally fixed. Who he
was talking about the thing you can sign up for
or a lot of the places offer where it's like
you get fifty dollars off every year or something if
you let them sometimes turn off your AC at non
peak hours or whatever. And the HVAC guy said, oh, dude,
(40:51):
I get calls all the time at peak hours from people.
I come out, I test their whole system, I look
at everything. It's the power company is turning off their
AC at like mid day, you know, two pm when
the sun is super hot, and he's like, I just
disconnect the thing that lets him turn it off and
it works fine.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
Nice, nice one dude, Nice one. HVAC guy. Yeah, this
is I know we're going a little bit long, but
I think it connects to many of us listening tonight,
especially Americans in the audience, because if you're wondering why
prices are increasing with electricity bills in particular, it may
indeed be due to AI and the construction of these
(41:33):
massive data centers, or the just the surge and demand
from processing power. So please write to us and let
us know what it's like in your neck of the
global woods. The last thing we want to mention was
something that is good news from Britain, accidental good news.
There was a data leak, a massive data leak that
exposed off gone assets and informants, people working in intelligence,
(41:57):
and as we mentioned earlier in our New Your War episode, again,
a lot of times those folks will end up getting
burned by the government or the agency that is I
won't even say employing, that is using them. So as
a result of this leak, thousands of Afghan nationals have
been brought to Britain in secrecy to save their lives,
(42:21):
which is, you know, leak aside, opsec aside. That's a
decent thing for the British government to do. But not
every leak turns out that way. And with that I
suggest we pause for a word from our sponsors and
then get into some other leak stories.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
And we've returned, guys. The definition of the word strive. Strive,
according to Merriam Webster, is to devote serious effort or energy.
Also to struggle in opposition. Strive. Sometimes it's combined, like
(43:02):
if you look at Oxford English and a couple of
other places. Is it is to devote serious energy, especially
in heavy opposition strive if you say it in Swedish.
Is Strava Strava. Now there is an app, a very
popular app with that name, Strava. It's a fitness app,
(43:23):
kind of like you know, your Fitbit things and all
the super popular ones here in the States. This one
is global. It's started by a couple of guys who
just had a cool idea after they were hanging out
in Harvard, you know at Harvard, I guess in Harvard
around Harvard.
Speaker 4 (43:42):
Hard stuff. Yeah, messing with the free run.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
It was started in two thousand and nine. I believe
those guys were rowers.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
You know.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
It reminds me of the Skulls movie. I think that
was Yale, but skull and Bones maybe what it was called. Anyway,
weird stuff. These guys figured, hey, let's make an app
that you can really track what you're doing, how much
you're doing it, where you're doing it, and let's make
this thing social baby, so you could share stuff like
how hard you're striving to get those fitness goals right,
(44:16):
and you can show off. You can even show off
exactly where you ran and how long you ran and
all that good stuff. You know, you know what, Let's
let people have maps of where they run. That's a
great idea. That sounds cool, dude, Yo, that sounds really great.
Let's do that.
Speaker 3 (44:32):
Okay, your wicked snap, your wicked smart maki.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
But actually it is, like on the surface, it's great.
If you go to the Strava website Strava dot com,
st r a v a dot com, you can learn
all about the cool stuff they do, and it is cool.
If if I was on a serious fitness routine thing
going right now, this would be at least up in
the top one or two competitive apps that I'd be
(44:57):
interested in. The only thing is probably wouldn't be that
excited because of the social aspects. It is good to know.
If you're like me and you don't want social aspects
to be shared, you can just turn those things off
in the app and that's not a problem. Cool. The
app still works, great, it's awesome. But if you don't
turn off the social aspects, uh oh, then you are
(45:21):
gonna share with people if you decide to all of
your location information, a ton of information, especially and specifically
where you are running when you're deciding to share that
kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
Even worse than that one website for Square, remember four square.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
Which was just which was just essentially ayre with whatever,
like Yeah, you have posted the.
Speaker 3 (45:46):
Location and the time that you were at and there
in real time, and it was gamified such that you know,
if you went to the Dave and Busters all the time,
you could eventually become the mayor of Dave and Busters,
not a king. Because the US is still a democracy.
But the thing that got me about it, I think
we all initially had this reaction was looking at this
(46:07):
from admittedly a paranoid baseline. I remember distinctly. I think
it was you and me matt At looking at it
and going, so, this just tells people when to rob you.
That's the game, It's like, is that the game of
this thing? So, but this sounds even more a more sophisticated,
accelerated version of what for Square is. And I think
(46:30):
one of the first questions would be are the social
settings on by default?
Speaker 2 (46:38):
I don't know. I assume they are somewhat or like,
as you're setting up the app, like with many others,
you give it access to certain things, right like your
location data and then your privacy settings. You can go
in and change those after it's all set up. But
I haven't actually used it, so I don't know that.
All I know is that some folks who are using
this thing are accidentally giving way their locations, and unfortunately
(47:03):
their locations are really important because they are protecting high
value human beings like the Swedish royal family. So here
we go. This is from NBC News July tenth, Swedish
bodyguards fitness app data reveals private locations of royal family.
(47:24):
I'm going to read just a couple of quotes from
this and then we can talk about it. The National
Security Service there in Sweden said it's investigating reports that
data shared by bodyguards on a fitness app Strava had
exposed the private locations of some of the country's most
powerful figures. It comes after the Swedish newspaper doggins dag
ns nithe I don't know how you say it and
(47:47):
y h e t er. They reported earlier that seven
members of the security service were sharing details on their
running and cycling routes on this fitness app, inadvertently revealing
the locations of the King in Queen's personal vacations. So
like where the King and Queen are hanging out when
they're in the Seychelles, or where they're in northern Sweden
(48:11):
in a place called Storlin, or you know, out at
the French riviera on a private luxury villa, which is fine, like, hey,
that's where the King and Queen are. But again, Ben,
as you said, if somebody has ill intent towards one
of these VIPs, then you just have to load up
your Strava app and check out specific people if you
(48:33):
know where to look and who to look for. But
it gets even worse. Guys, just before all of this
came out, the Prime Minister in Sweden's location was given
away I think at thirty or thirty five specific places,
including his home address, including everywhere he goes on runs,
(48:53):
including like other important people's houses and places of business
that he went to visit. Just locations that you don't
want to give away for security purposes, especially if you're
in the business of protecting these folks. Probably not a
good idea. And this isn't even close to the first
(49:15):
time Strava has had a problem with this, just like
other fitness apps and other location tracking apps have had problems,
but this one specifically. There's this cool thing that has
happened in the past where someone will go on a run, right,
and they will draw a picture on the map with
their running. Does that make sense, like you could draw
a picture of a bunny rabbit depending on where you run,
(49:36):
because it actually draws out with GPS coordinates the pictures
you create. That's fun, that's cool. But another thing that
happened back in twenty twenty two military bases in Israel,
like the full bases. The inner workings of the base
were outlined through some of this Strava app stuff because
(49:57):
personnel were walking through the base, and now you can know, oh,
here's the ingress egress in all of these areas and
where you can actually turn. It's almost like giving somebody
a blueprint of something.
Speaker 3 (50:08):
It's exactly like that.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
Yeah. Well, like in the past, if you just had
satellite imagery and you imagine you're an opposing force or something. Okay,
I can see there's a large building there, but I
have no idea actually what's inside or how you move
through it or anything like that. Right now you have
this data overlay there you go, and this is something
that you can't really walk back.
Speaker 3 (50:31):
Right For instance, the bodyguards here, assuming they still have
employment with the royal family, they can turn off this
stuff so it won't happen in the future. But they can't.
I guess they could try to remove it from the
system with help of from the company, remove that information
(50:54):
in that data, but it's not going to remove it
from the minds or the servers of anybody who already
accessed it in the past. I don't know, man, this
is such a logistical headache because now you've got to
imagine all the conventional regular routes have to be rethought, right,
(51:15):
You've got to fight a new vacation spot.
Speaker 4 (51:17):
I don't know, man, Well, it goes even beyond this.
Speaker 2 (51:20):
Guys. In twenty twenty three, there was a I don't
know his exact position. He's essentially in the navy, but
he was a commander for the Russian Navy, essentially specifically
for submarines. He had his Strava profile open when he
was walking around, and it suspected that that app gave
away his specific location and he was assassinated. It's suspected
(51:45):
of that. There was very recently somebody in Kiev who
was assassinated and I don't know if Strava has anything
to do with that, but it looks pretty similar to
some of the reportings. Like the initial reportings, they located
this guy in a parking lot and just took him
out really quickly. There it goes back to during the
(52:07):
last election, everybody, Kamala Harris, President Trump, everybody was being
tracked with Strava because of the secret service that was
around them.
Speaker 3 (52:16):
It's like, this is crazy, It's it's nuts too, because
this can happen in so many ways. I agree with you, Matt,
that this would be a timely episode. I think it's again,
it's easy for a lot of folks, not even royal family,
right or royal family adjacent, It's so easy for a
(52:38):
lot of folks to forget how public various applications will
make your location. Forgive the accidental rhyme there. But you know,
I think about that when we look at the big,
the big social media things, right that always give you
the opportunity to post your location. Hey, everybody in the
(52:59):
neighborhood who might want to steal this car, don't worry.
I'm in Botswata. Here's a fun picture of me and
some animals. You know, you go, It's it's tough, you
gotta be you gotta be careful with these kind of things.
But I it feels like these are just going to
continue in the future, right, something like this is going
(53:20):
to inevitably happen. Similar to when we were talking about
those poor folks who just missed their families, you know,
on various submarines, and we're writing a letter to their
loved win because they're in a very difficult long distance
relationship and then boom, someone said, you know some enemy forces, like,
oh they are by horror moves.
Speaker 2 (53:42):
Yeah, yeah, really somebody working out as hard as they
can on a sub and oh there's the location of
that nuclear submarine that the like probably not probably not
going to get the cordinate's out from the sub because
of the signal or whatever. But it's fine. It goes
back to twenty seventeen. I completely missed this, I think.
(54:04):
I don't know if we talked about it. I can't
remember talking about it. But there was a medium article
written by a person named Drew Robb who looked at
this thing called the Global heat Map, which is something
that was created out of Strava's global network of athletes.
According to the article, and it is a global map
(54:24):
of runs that people had taken, and it included a
full walkthrough essentially of United States bases in Syria and Afghanistan,
as well as the Royal Navy's fast Lane Base which
Fasla n Base. Major major security flaws. So let's just
(54:46):
keep our eyes and ears open on this. Let us
know if you use the app or a fitness app
or a location tracker that you're excited about that we
need to know about.
Speaker 3 (54:55):
The post your location to us right, give us like
a your social security number, blood type, list of childhood fears,
what else? Favorite favorite location on your nuclear sub Where
do you guys work out? Yeah? How close is it
to the bay? Oh gosh, that's dark humor. But it's
(55:17):
a real thing, and it's something I believe we can
all agree, everyone including us, needs to think about more often.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
Agreed. Well, that's it. Thanks for listening, y'all.
Speaker 3 (55:31):
Yes, thank you so much for joining us, friends and neighbors,
Fellow conspiracy realists. We can't wait to hear if you
successfully nail that job in the Chinese National Park system.
Tell us about your experiences with Wi Fu companions. Take
a Yeti blood oath with us, or even better, tell
us what a YETI blood oath should be. We cannot,
(55:53):
oh gosh, and we welcome everybody's observations about electric bills.
Those effect all all of us, regardless of demographic. You
can find us any number of ways. You can always
write us an email, you can give us a call,
and you can find us on the lines. Don't post
your location.
Speaker 4 (56:11):
No, please. You can reach us to the handle conspiracy
stuff where we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group
Here's where it gets crazy. On x FKA, Twitter and
on YouTube, or we have video content for you to
absolutely dive into if you want to hit us up
on Instagram and TikTok. However, we are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (56:31):
If you want to call us, our number is one
eight three three STDWYTK. When you call in, give yourself
a cool nickname and let us know if we can
use your name and message on the air. Within that message,
if you'd instead like to send us words, attachments, pictures, anything,
why not instead send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (56:50):
We are the entities that beat each piece of correspondence
we receive. Be well aware, yet unafreed. Sometimes the void
writes back, Dylan, did you go the An estimated eighty
percent of US households have UNO card decks. Anyway. Conspiracy
at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (57:28):
Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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